Page 56 of The Cost of Silence

I fold the clipping once more, jaw tight.

And a new thought forms, dark, unwelcome, unavoidable: Someone connected her father’s death to our family long before she ever printed that article.

Silence settles over the table. I tap my fingers against the wood, thinking. “Isabella continues digging,” I say finally. “But she does it with blinders. We feed her parts of this. Enough to keep her busy and productive, not enough to put additional targets on her back.”

Matteo grins. “So, she becomes our in-house bloodhound?”

“Don’t call her that,” I snap.

His brows shoot up. “Jesus, you’ve got it bad.”

Adi looks between us, lips twitching once before smoothing out. “Does she know you’re planning to use her work to trap the men trying to kill her?”

“She knows she’s helping us,” I say. “She asked for something real. This is it. I’m not going to lie about that part.”

“And the part about her father somehow being linked to us stays between us,” Adi says quietly. “You sit on that until we’re sure.”

My jaw locks as I nod.

Images flash: Isabella’s voice breaking when she talked about her dad, the way she looked at the charred mess of her apartment building, like someone had burned the last pieces of him she had left.

“She’s barely holding it together as it is,” I say. “Telling her now, when all we have is a theory and a cut-out old obituary, is cruel. And if it turns out to be wrong…” I shake my head. “No. She gets that truth when I can put the men responsible in front of her in handcuffs or a body bag. Not before.”

Adi studies me for a long beat. “Dad would agree with you,” he says finally.

Maybe.

Or maybe he’d tell me to keep my distance from the woman who makes my heart pound like it’s twenty again and my head too fuzzy to be useful. Especially when she’s somehow linked to a historical threat that’s rearing its head now my father is dead.

Matteo sighs, dropping his phone on the table. “Okay, enough doom and gloom. Tell us what’s really eating you, Nic. Because this isn’t just business making you twitch.”

He’s not wrong. He’s never as oblivious as he pretends. “She asked for a fling,” I say flatly.

Adi blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“She asked for a no-strings arrangement,” I clarify, jaw tight. “Her words. Just sex. No future, no expectations.”

Matteo lets out a delighted bark of laughter. “Holy shit. I love her.”

“Shut up,” I growl.

He lifts his hands. “I mean that in a completely respectful, non-threatening, please-don’t-kill-me way, but come on, that’s hot.”

Adi rubs his forehead. “And you said…?”

“Yes,” I admit.

A beat of stunned silence.

Adi is the one who breaks it. “You trust yourself with that?”

Do I?

I picture her backed against the wall, pupils blown, breathing fast, telling me she’s tired of pretending there’s nothing between us. I remember the way my body reacted, the way my self-control frayed when she said I’m in.

“I trust that keeping her at arm’s length isn’t working,” I say. “She’s in my space. In my head.” In my arms last night, even if itwas just holding her while she slept. “Pushing this away doesn’t make it disappear. It just makes me worse at pretending.”

Adi leans back, thoughtful. “So you’d rather… lean into it?”